What did you get out of them?

I just read Leadership and Self-Deception and while I'm not in total agreement (if people were that good at reading each others' intentions, Bernie Madoff couldn't have stolen so much money), I think there's a lot of truth in the ideas, especially about the process of grudge formation.

In particular, I think that if you (or I) are looking for the situations where the other party has fucked up, and reveling in it, something has gone very wrong in the grudge-bearer's view of the situation. The book's take is that grudge bearing always starts with a failure of taking good will into action on the grudge bearer's part. This is at least a good place to start looking.

I think part (maybe a whole lot) of my problem with akrasia/motivation is playing out the grudge pattern internally ("You fucking piece of shit! Can't you get anything right?" "I just can't make myself do anything. What's wrong with me? Normal people get things done." And repeat.). The book doesn't seem specifically all that helpful for the internal version, but I suspect it's a place to start.